The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1887-04-22
DOCTOR TRIFULGAS.
The Fate of One Whose Door
Closed Against the Poor.

"Whiffp' whistled the rising gale.
"Swash!" beats the rain as it comes
down in torrents.
Low sway the trees under the blast
that sweeps the Volsinian shore and
dashes its fury against the slopes
of the mountains of Crimma. The
)ck-bound coast is rent and riven by
the tempestuous pillows that surge and
foam along the vast Megalocrida sea-
'Whiffr' "Swash!"
In the depth of the bay nestles the
little seaport town of Luktrop. 1t
boasts few hundred houses with
greenish miradores sheltering them
from the winds of the main, and four
or five steep streets that look more
like the beds of mountain torrent
than public thoroughfares. Not far off
smokes the Vanglor, an arctic volcano,
which by day belches forth thick
volumes of sulphurous vapor and by
night fitful floods of flame. This
crater, visible fully $50 kertses out at
sea, answers the purpose of beacon,
and guides home to Luktrop the coast
ers-yawls, SHOWS, hoys and doggers
that plow the troubled waters of the
Megalocrida.
On the other side of the town are
heaped up extensive ruins of the Grim
merian era, while the suburb, of Moor
ish aspect, with its white walls, round
roofs and terraces calcined by the sun,
seems a huge pile of square stones
thrown together at haphazard, and
.afar off reminds you of casbah or AL
gerian fortress. The whole mass, in
fact, looks like q cluster of dice, the
dots of which have worn away with
age. Among other structures peculiar
to the place may be seen an odd-look-
ing building called the "Six-Quatre, I"
from the number of its windows, six in
front and four in the rear A steeple
rises above the town, the square steeplc
of Sainte Philtilene, with its bells visi-
bic through the open stone work, and
when these are swung--as they are at
times-by the violence of the storm, it
is accounted bad sign, and the good
people of the place are filled with fear
at the omen.
Such is Luktrop, with q few stray
houses on the heath beyond, scattered
amid the broom and furze, as in Brit
tany.
Luktrop, however, is not in Brit
tany. Is it in France? / can not say.
In EuropeP l don't know At an rate,
it would be useless perhaps, to look up
the place on the map, even in Steiler's
atlas.
A discreet rap is heard at the small,
narrow door of the ''Six-Quatre, on
the lefthand corner of the Rue Messag-
liere.
A comfortable house in the "Six-
Quatre," if such word is known at
Luktrop, and one of the thriftiest in the
place, if to earn on an average few
thousand fretzers year be a sign of
thrift.
A ferocious yelp, something between
a bark and howl, has answered the
rap.
Soon window above the door of the
"Six-Quatre" is thrown open and an
angry voice from inside the house
bawls out:
away with all intrudersrn
A young girl, shivering in the rain,
with seedy, WORKOUT cape thrown
over her shoulders, inquiries if DR.. Tri-
fulgas is at home.
"He is or isn't, that depends.
81 come for father, who's dying"
and where is he dyingp"
by the Val Karniou, four kertses
hence"
And what's his nameP"
wort Kartif."
what, Wort Kartif, the herring
curer."
Yes, and if DR.. Trifulgas would only
Gomez"
"Dr Trifulgas isn't at home"
And the window is brutalIy closed in
the poor girls face, while the whiffs of
the wind and the swash of the rain out
side mix their voices in roaring and
deafening din.
A hard man is DR.. Trifulgas, with
but little feeling for fellow creature,
and one who attends patient only if
handsomely paid in advance for his
services. His old dog, Hurzof, cross
between bull and spaniel, might be
said to have more heart than he. The
door of the "Six-Quatre" remains in-
variably closed upon the poor and
opens only to the rich, Moreover Dr.
Trifulgas has a whole scale of fees;
typhoid fever, so much; brain fever, so
much; so much for pericarditis, and
the same for as many more diseases as
doctors choose to invent by the dozen.
And Wort Kartif, the herring curer, is
poor man, with penniless brood.
Why, then, should DR.. Trifulgas be-
devil himself and on such nightP
"Rousiag mo from my sleep,"